The minds behind Vancouver’s new women’s professional soccer team had a lofty goal as they looked to name the club — they wanted to simultaneously inspire and capture the essence of a new era.
Vancouver Rise FC was unveiled as the moniker for the city’s new Northern Super League team on Monday.
“I think it has that sense of empowerment, that sense of feeling,” said sporting director Stephanie Labbe. “I get goosebumps, still, thinking about how much the word ‘rise’ and this team, Vancouver Rise, can embody and can be connected to.”
A teal shield-shaped logo was also revealed, crowned with three snow-capped mountains and including a bursting golden sun.
The colour of the sun is special to Labbe, who was Canada’s goalkeeper when the team captured an Olympic championship at the Tokyo Games.
“Personally, I really like having gold in there,” she said. “It has a special place in my heart.”
The process of choosing a name and logo wasn’t easy, said Rise president Sinead King.
“You’ve got so many ideas and you want to get it perfect. You start to overthink absolutely everything,” she said, adding that the decision makers wanted something that personified what it means to be a woman in professional sports.
“What are the opportunities? How do we get to elevate the pathways for them? And we feel like Rise really brings that to life.”
The NSL includes six founding teams in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax. Ottawa Rapid FC, Halifax Tides FC and Calgary Wild FC have already unveiled their names and logos.
The league is set to kick off its inaugural season in April, with each team playing a 25-game schedule. But there’s still ample work to be done before players hit the pitch.
Which field Rise will play on has yet to be announced, though King said Monday there may be opportunities to have some games at B.C. Place, home to Major League Soccer’s Vancouver Whitecaps and a stadium with a capacity of nearly 55,000.
Rise and the Whitecaps share an owner in Greg Kerfoot, but will operate as separate clubs.
“We want to have our own home and our own stadium,” King said.
Labbe also still needs to build out the Rise’s roster, a process that can be daunting, she admitted.
“One good thing is I love doing puzzles, and so I feel like every time I’m doing something, I’m adding another piece to the puzzle, and so it doesn’t scare me,” Labbe said. “It’s really, really exciting. And every time I get a new piece that I can add to it, it just brings more excitement, and it makes it feel more real.”
Vancouver is already “deep into the process” of looking for a head coach and is hoping to name one in the next month, she added, and news of their first player signing should also come “soon.”
The team will include players who have World Cup experience, Olympic experience and youth national team experience.
Attracting athletes to Vancouver hasn’t been an issue, said Labbe, who played in Europe and the NWSL in the United States.
“The amount of talent that comes out of this country is unbelievable. And to me, it’s a lot of untapped talent right now,” she said. “I think giving these players a place where they can actually pursue these opportunities, not just think about going to college and then maybe not pursuing it any further than that, but really dreaming of this and being a part of this.”
The goal is to make NSL one of the top five leagues in the world, with teams that could compete alongside the NWSL, or the leagues in the U.K., Germany and Spain.
News about the new league may be slow to trickle out, King said, but that doesn’t mean decisions aren’t being made behind the scenes.
“The Northern Super League is incredibly organized. It’s really collaborative through all the clubs. We all want to make sure we’ve got a sustainable and successful league. So I think we’re all confident that we’re going to be ready for April. There might be some hiccups along the way, because launching a league is a massive undertaking, but we’re not looking to push (the start date) back.”